


lift your head, look out the window

by hypotheticalfanfic



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 06:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5901463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes some getting used to. Everything does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lift your head, look out the window

“How many?"

“I try not to think about it, actually.” Whirring, sizzling. “But if Natasha’s numbers are right, and they usually are, somewhere in the low thousands. Which, if you think about it, isn’t really that many once you factor in the time frame. Maybe ten, twenty a year if you’d been awake the whole time. And that’s counting collateral damage estimates, so those numbers are a little rough. But yeah.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Doesn’t bother you.”

“Hmm? Oh.” Tapping of metal. “Bothers me plenty.” Click, click, click. “The question is, does it bother you?”

Silence.

“Your parents—“ whirring, a muttered curse, “Howard Stark.”

“Yeah, cupcake. I know. Everyone knows.”

A long, freezing pause. “I am sorry. I wasn’t, I didn’t—“

“I know, or you’d be, uh, probably not dead, but in a lot more pain right now. JARVIS, what is this crap? No, strike that, I don’t care, just play something. Else. Preferably something good.”

“Yes, sir. Queueing up ‘Thunderstruck’ now.”

“Live version?”

“Of course, sir.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

The recording ends. Steve looks at the ceiling like the answer’s written there. “JARVIS, why did Stark send me that?”

“Ms. Potts sent that, Captain. I believe she felt that Sergeant Barnes apologizing was a momentous step in his recovery.”

“Thank her for me, please, JARVIS. And don’t let anyone up here for a while.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The next sound is a punching bag disintegrating, then another, then another.

 

—

 

“In the—thing. The flying thing.” Bucky - whoever he is right now waves his good hand. “With the chip. The fight.”

Steve nods. “Yeah, I remember. I was trying not to hurt you, Buck, I swear.”

A lopsided grin spreads across that face. “You beat the hell out of me.” All Bucky, for a brief flash.

“Yeah, like I said. Trying not to hurt you.” Steve grins back, relieved beyond words to hear even a hint of Bucky seep through, even for a second, before he slips back into the nebulous half-Barnes-half-Soldier state that seems to be his default lately.

“I was scared.”

“You didn’t act like it.”

“I was never scared, but I was scared. I was scared when I was stuck under that beam and we were falling. I was scared when you got my shoulder out and the arm pinned. I was scared.” The effort in telling, in admitting, puts Bucky under for a long time, an hour at least. Bucky - back then, before, Bucky had always been able to sleep anywhere, anytime. Steve had seen him fall asleep perching on barstools, leaning against pianos, in a foxhole with shells going off all around them, cantilevered over the windowsill that blazing hot summer back in, what, ’37? Something. Anyway, the point is, Steve has seen Bucky fall asleep and stay asleep in situations much wilder than sitting on the floor in the corner of a room, legs splayed out in front of him. But somehow, this sudden shutoff feels different. Stranger. Probably the brainwashed PTSD super assassin thing is the difference, really.

Steve watches Bucky’s closed eyes flicker in sniper sleep with half a dozen weapons inches from him. At first they kept knives and guns and anything harmful away from him, but it made things worse. Through muddy words and vague hand gestures, they figured out that having the weapons around helps him, keeps him more level. So now the implements of death and torture stay within easy reach, and he walks around armed to the teeth even when he’s relatively normal. Steve has come home more than once to see the metal-armed man watching bad movies in sweatpants with guns and knives strapped all over him. It takes some getting used to. Everything does.

 

—

 

“What are you doing?” Bucky pops up out of nowhere again. Steve’s almost stopped jumping when it happens. This time, he’s especially still, because his handwriting is usually atrocious and he wants this to look nice.

“When we took down the helicarriers, there were SHIELD agents who fought back, against HYDRA, I mean. Most of them died. I’m writing to their families.” Steve nods at the stack of folders in front of him. “They deserve more.”

“What do you say?”

“I mean, there’s a couple hundred so the language gets a little hammered out. I try to put something personal in each of them, but…” Steve trails off. “Mostly I say that they chose to give their lives for freedom, to save others, and that they, they’re heroes.”

Bucky sits across from him. “Do you think it gives them comfort? Words on paper from a man they’ve never met?” He’s Barnes right now, Barnes with heavy streaks of the Soldier, and unexpected rage bubbles up inside Steve.

A deep breath. “I think it’s partially my fault that they’re dead, and I owe them something.” Another deep breath, in and out. The man across from his doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, just waits. “What do you think would be better?”

Barnes shrugs. “Chto sdelano, to sdelano.”

Steve doesn’t respond. Keeps writing painstaking letters, one after the other. Doesn’t look up. The silence stretches out, solid as the table between them. Bucky leaves.

Later, Steve looks it up - “What’s done is done.” Sounds about right.

 

—

 

The two of them are speaking Russian, quietly and in a corner. This happens more often than Steve would like. It’s not that he doesn’t trust or like Natasha - quite the opposite. It’s…it’s complicated, with a lot of moving parts that Steve isn’t especially interested in looking at too closely. Part of it is that he isn’t sure speaking Russian is going to help Bucky heal. It feels like it’d make it worse, like it’d be indulging the Soldier parts instead of trying to prune them off. Also he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t understand what’s being said. He’s fully aware how petty that is, thanks. And it’s not like he’s stupid, he could learn Russian. Probably. Maybe. He’s got pretty good French from the war and whatever scraps of Latin and Greek he remembers from that semester at art school. A little Spanish from the neighbors. A few swears in a few other languages. Russian can’t be that hard.

Except that it is, it’s impossible, he gives up. Captain America never gives up in the stories, but Steve Rogers absolutely gives up on learning Russian. “I don’t know how you get your head around it,” he says to Barton once.

“What, Russian?” Barton shrugs, fires an exploding bolt at a target. “Eh. It’s easier than Mandarin, you know? Or Turkish, that sucked.” Fiddles with his hearing aids. “Fucking Turkish, man.”

“You don’t speak Turkish.” Steve pulls back on the bow.

“Yeah, I do. Pick your elbow up.”

Steve does. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously, pick your elbow up. No, more than that.”

“No, I mean do you seriously speak Turkish?” Release - a miss, but a near one.

“Not bad, Cap.” Barton gives him a nod. “I mean, yeah, a little. Tash taught me. Enough to get around, you know? Read signs, talk to people a little. She speaks, I don’t know, everything.” Barton grins. “She’s crazy smart though. Smarter than you and me and probably smarter than Stark. Just a different way. She says languages for her are like shooting is for me, or like, I don’t know, running stupidly fast is for you.”

“Bucky’s like that.” A pause. “Used to be, anyway.” Pulls back on the bow again, points his elbow up high enough that it feels ridiculous, which is apparently correct. “Picks, I mean picked up languages fast and easy, all the time.” Fires. Another near miss. “Learned some Japanese during the war just in case we ever needed it, that kind of thing.”

“Getting better, sir.” Barton claps him on the shoulder. “Anyway, if you want to know what they’re talking about, ask Tash. She’ll tell you.”

“Or she’ll shoot me.”

“Or that.”

 

—

 

Over time, Saturdays become List Days. Whoever’s around, free, and bored goes with Steve to do or learn something from his list of things he’s missed. Some of the time they’re a movie or TV show, maybe a food or a historical event. A field trip is never out of the question, like spending three days (it was supposed to be eight hours) in Cuba after Sam let it slip about the embargo - and after they all recovered from Steve’s rant. Steve picks things from the list at random, no order, so the timeline jumps around too. One day he misreads his own handwriting, and Dr. Banner and Tony end up completely wasted on this horrible grape brandy stuff (turns out that the list actually said “Disco”). They’re fun, and they help the team bond.

Bucky doesn’t often go on List Days. He will occasionally watch a movie with the team or listen to an album with Steve, but Barton doesn’t seem to like him and Natasha never goes and Sam is wary, edgy around him. Tony just asks invasive questions and makes inappropriate jokes. Dr. Banner can sometimes cajole Bucky into joining - Bucky, like everyone, seems to really like Dr. Banner - but it’s rare.

The Stonewall Riots are, for better or for worse, the one Bucky is around for this time. Steve had read the papers when the Zoot Suit Riots happened (the song had nothing to do with the actual violence, he assured Bucky, who seemed confused by the Google result), so he assumes that this was a similar thing. It was, sort of, but not. Wikipedia’s article leaves them speechless. The documentaries Ms. Potts finds for them leave them in tears. Bucky’s hand - his good hand - won’t stop shaking.

They don’t talk about it. Sitting there, on the couch in Steve’s room in Stark Tower, they sit in silence. Bucky leans forward just enough to turn off the television, then collapses back against the upholstery. Steve wipes his face with one hand as if to scrub away the horror.

Later, Natasha and Bucky sit in a corner again, speaking Russian so fast it hurts to listen. Steve sees tears standing in Bucky’s eyes, sees Natasha holding his good elbow in her palm. It’s a comforting gesture, one she does with Barton, too, and Steve is surprised at the flare of jealousy in him. Bucky - Barnes wouldn’t ever let him touch him like that. Wouldn’t let anybody, really, not nowadays. Back then, when they were young, Bucky had been all touch, purely tactile, like a kitten. Steve realizes that he hasn’t touched Bucky in a month or more, not counting sparring. His skin aches.

 

—

 

“Not afraid of them.”

“Yeah, well, you damn well should be!” Steve is yelling, he realizes belatedly. That’s probably not what you’re supposed to do when trying to get your severely shell-shocked best friend - the one who was a formerly brainwashed Russian super soldier assassin and is maybe not any or all of those things anymore - to keep himself hidden for a little while longer so he doesn’t get shot in the back of the head by a HYDRA agent.

“Enemies I can deal with.” Bucky, this is definitely Bucky, presses his lips together. Steve knows that expression, knows it like he knows the steps up to his apartment, knows it like he knows the Dodgers’ record in ’36. “Trust me, there’s nothing they can do to me I haven’t done before. I know their tricks.” He cracks half a grin, a chilling killer’s smirk. “I know HYDRA better than anybody alive.” He scratches under his chin just like he always used to, and Steve aches like he always does now. “You? You’re something else.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Steve can feel his neck getting hot, can feel a blush - an angry blush, because he is ridiculous - building. “What, you can’t deal with me? You’d rather I just left you alone so you could go get yourself killed—”

“No.” Bucky shakes his head, frustration at himself, frustration at Steve, something. “No, it’s, it’d be easier, is all. If you were an enemy. If you were my mission, end of orders.” He sits forward, rakes one hand through the shaggy hair he won’t cut (because he won’t let anybody near him with a sharp implement, or because he won’t recognize himself, or both, or neither). “I get confused. Sometimes I know I remember you, and I know I remember how we used to be. And those are the times I, the other stuff, the arm and everything, they go out of focus. They aren’t,” clenches his good hand. “I don’t know. Other times it’s fuzzy the other way around: like you and the Commandos are something I dreamed up in the snow, something I saw in a movie or something and got mixed up.” He sits back again, props the chair up on two legs, and suddenly he’s the old smiling Bucky, real and true. “I don’t know, Steve. I mean, I don’t feel afraid of them. Or of you, really. It’s just different.”

Steve’s hands have, he realizes belatedly, been gripping the back of the other chair so hard he hears it creak when he relaxes them just a hair. “I just want you to be safe. I can’t—I don’t want to lose you again.” Takes a step forward, toward Bucky, toward something he cannot begin to predict before he can stop himself.

The fully Bucky moment has passed, like they always do, and the man is something (someone) else now: a bit Bucky, a bit the Soldier, a bit Barnes. The man stands, leaves. These days, Bucky is always shifting, different parts of himself surfacing and butting against each other and subsuming each other and fading again. Steve is pretty good, most of the time, at telling when he’s one or the other or mixes of both, but it’s slippery at best. It takes some getting used to. Everything does. Steve lowers his head, breathes, breathes, breathes.

 

—

 

Sam strides in, all confidence like always. “Ready to watch me school your boy, Captain?”

Steve pastes on a smile. “Doubtful. I’m just here to hide from Stark.” Holds up a crossword puzzle. “Don’t mind me.” He fights down the blush - an embarrassed one, because he is a blushing type of person and Bucky once catalogued six different blushes Steve had and the Commandoes laughed themselves senseless. It had made him blush. The whole thing was probably very funny to them, and Steve thinks for half a second he catches Bucky - Barnes, whoever - swallow a grin at him in the here and now.

“Fair enough. Sergeant,” Sam reaches out a hand, waits for a moment. Bucky doesn’t reach out, but does nod in a friendly enough way. “All right, let’s go. Today is Simon and Garfunkel day.” Sam pulls out the chessboard, gets the pieces set up. “I’m serious, some sad white boy folk music’ll make you feel better.” Moves a pawn. “JARVIS, play some for us, please? None of the B-sides, just the hits.”

“Certainly, Mr. Wilson.”

From the looks of it, the man is Barnes now: not Bucky, but not the Soldier either. He didn’t try to kill Steve this morning, and he hasn’t talked shit about New Jersey, which are the two most obvious cues either way each morning. Here, now, Barnes sits slightly forward, knives glittering on his back. The arm (whatever they’d done to it to keep it shiny must have worn off; the red star is flaking and hard to make out now) rests at his side, the metal hand curled idly in his lap. He uses his good hand, moves a knight. “This is terrible.”

“You haven’t even heard it,” Sam says. “It’s ‘Sound of Silence,’ man, this is a classic. Anyway, you’ll think it’s your theme song here in a minute.” Moves another pawn.

“Russia invented chess.” Barnes - maybe a little bit Bucky now - moves a pawn. “Or perfected it.”

“Yeah, all those Russian grandmasters, I know.” Sam hesitates, moves a bishop. “You’re not a grandmaster, though.”

“Well, not in chess.” Moves the knight again. He sounds so much like Bucky in that moment that Steve snorts, tries to hide his face behind the crossword puzzle. Sees Barnes glance over his way for a moment, a breath, nothing more.

“Shit.” Sam leans back in his chair, drums his fingers on the table. “Hmm.” Starts to sing along under his breath, a big fat tell if Steve has ever seen one. “‘Narrow streets of cobblestone, hmm hmm ba dum ba da da dum da,’ ha, got you now.” Moves a pawn.

“Der'mo!” Still Barnes; the Russian cursing is normal for him. The Soldier doesn’t swear, and Bucky's stream of profanity could shame a sailor - in English. Steve could write a goddamned monograph on the shading between the three men or more he sees, the ways they blend into each other and separate. Barnes gnaws on a ragged fingernail. “This music is awful. Why not what you played yesterday, that band with a leopard?” Moves a knight.

“It’s important to mix up your genres. Otherwise you end up like Stark, who thinks music started and stopped with AC/DC.” A rook moves. “Wait, you think Def Leppard had an actual leopard in it? No, okay, my fault, didn’t explain it well. Yeah, there’s not a leopard in the band. It’s just the name of the band. There’s no leopard in the—you know what, never mind. Anyway, there’s only like three good Def Leppard songs. Can’t be all them all the time. Hair metal, I mean, you hear a few songs you’ve heard ‘em all. Simon and Garfunkel is like its own genre, plus then you have Paul Simon’s solo stuff, which, most of it - check - most of it sucks, but then he does, you know - well, you don’t know, but - he does ‘Hearts and Bones,’ which is just the saddest—“

Moves go back and forth as he talks, until, “Checkmate.” Bucky, pure unadulterated Bucky, grins, leans back, satisfied and grinning. “No, go on, keep explaining about the leopard.”

“Fuck, man.” Sam shakes his head. “Getting good.”

“Always was.” The laugh breaks Steve’s heart, because he closes his eyes as Sam sets the board back up for another game. He hears Bucky, just Bucky, no darkness added on top of him, and they could be back home in their own time if Steve wasn’t breathing so easily, and he wants so much to be there. To have Bucky, whole and home, flirting with anything that moves and pickpocketing despite Steve’s lectures (“Keeps us fed, Stevie, and the guy was a prick, come on, they got oranges at Martinelli’s,” oh god, oh god). Bucky stays for a while, but Steve opens his eyes as Bucky fades into Barnes, then something startles him and the Soldier is back and that one small horrible moment of perfection is gone, dashed away.

 

—

 

“You know, Steve, Tony was a big fan of the Howling Commandos as a kid.” Ms. Potts is smiling, holding a flute of champagne and wearing a dress of the same color. Steve is always struck by her, by how much like Peggy she is. He half turns to say so to Bucky, forgetting for a moment all of the reasons that he’s alone at this thing. Turns back.

“That so?” He tries very hard to sound teasing, laid-back. It must work, because no one’s eyes go sad and no one reaches out a hand or says anything about—

“Barnes was my favorite.” Tony grins at him, the grin that means that they’re friends right now, as opposed to the one that means they can’t stand the sight of each other. Or the others. Tony has a lot of grins. Steve could write a paper on them, too. And the subtle differences in the ways Ms. Potts rolls her eyes in response. “No offense, Cap, it’s just true. When I was a kid, I mean. Had the jacket and everything. You know why?”

“I don’t know, Stark. Because he’s a better shot than me?” Steve’s so tired. Political fundraisers are the worst part of the whole thing, and he carefully selects which ones he’ll go to. This one, thrown by a friend of Sam’s, is for the VA, so Steve is obviously thrilled to help, but he hates the suits and ties, hates the schmoozing, hates leaving Bucky to his own devices. He always worries that the Soldier will flare up, that he’ll come home to an empty place or a dead body or something worse.

“Well, he is, yeah, but no, it was because my dad hated him. Hated, like, snarly ‘don’t mention that guy to me’ hated him.” Tony shakes someone’s hand, flashes a peace sign in a photo. He’s tired, Steve can tell, but just this side of drunk and faking his way through. Except for the attention, Tony hates these things, too, and something about that makes Steve feel almost like they’re actual friends.

Steve nods. “Yeah, Bucky wasn’t too fond of Howard.”

“Well, you know why, right?”

Steve shrugs. “Lots of reasons. He poked at people. You’re a lot like him that way - the annoying way. Bucky hates being poked at.”

“Nope. I’m not annoying, am I, Pepper?” That particular eyeroll is a new one, and Steve files it away for later. “Love you, mean it. No, I mean with Barnes, all you, O Captain my Captain. It’s clear as the nose on - hey, is that Carol Danvers? Shit, I owe her a favor, actually a lot of favors, shit, shit, hide me. Hide me!”

Steve is already gone, smiling as sincerely as he can at a group of newly-returned Afghanistan vets. In his head, as he shakes hands and salutes and signs things, the words roll around. “All you.” What does that mean?

 

—

 

Barton pipes up too loud, meaning his hearing aids are halfway broken again, “Hey Cap, what’s gabardine?”

“Sam making you listen to Simon and Garfunkel, too?” Natasha’s knitting, which is oddly frightening. On closer look, she seems to be knitting a metallic yarn that looks like steel wire, using needles sharp enough to filet a man, which is somehow more comforting. Steve’s life is a little strange these days.

“Why do you think I’d know that?” Steve asks.

“Sounds old-timey. Like geegaw and hoosegow.” Clint’s grin isn’t quite at what Darcy calls “I Grew Up Deeply Unstable In A Creepy Circus”-level, but it’s not far off, either. Barnes being here has everyone on edge. Clint’s fiddling with one of his bolts, probably one that explodes or emits knockout gas or turns water into wine.

“It’s waterproof.” He, in any of the versions of him that might surface, has a soft voice now, when he’s not barking orders or threats. Most of the time he’s muttering in half Russian, half Brooklyn, but sometimes it muddles into something new. “They used to make raincoats out of it. Real durable.” It’s a little Bucky, mostly Barnes, but the intonation is more Soldier, and Steve hasn’t seen this particular version before.

The room is full of people who are terrifying in their own rights. An army of alien monsters, an army of highly trained HYDRA operatives, any army any time, they’re game and going to win. And now they’re all staring at Barnes like he’s grown a third head to go with the already-weird second head (the metaphor here is that the arm - sometimes Steve thinks of it as The Arm - is the second head; okay, so he is still working on metaphors).

“Why on earth do you know that?” Steve asks, his voice warm and trying very hard not to be excited. Steve gets excited any time a version of Bucky with the Soldier there too says something unprompted that isn’t horrifying. Although maybe knowing about suit fabric is horrifying these days, who knows, it’s hard to tell.

Bucky swings his head toward Steve, meets his eyes for a second. “Polar expeditions.” A one-shoulder shrug and he’s back to sharpening a knife.

Steve nods, understanding, remembering how Bucky (only Bucky then) had been obsessed with the Poles, with Amundsen and Shackleton and all the rest. They’d worn thick, heavy coats made of gabardine and the like. Steve remembers reading aloud to Bucky, stories about freezing cold and unlikely survival, and a chill washes over him as he thinks about ice. He hadn’t even thought about Bucky and the expeditions when he’d fallen - had been thinking about Peggy, had thought Bucky was long dead, had not expected to wake up cold. Bucky would have packed that plane with warm clothes, properly canned food, a tin of sardines: anything to keep somebody alive in the Arctic. Maybe a gabardine coat or two, too. Not that it had really mattered: Steve froze, the coats hadn’t saved the expeditions, Bucky’s never been to the North Pole (maybe the Soldier has, Steve’s traitorous brain whispers), but the strangest things stick in the memory. The room is quiet for a good long while after that.

 

—

 

Steve isn’t sleeping - sleep’s tough to come by these days - but he doesn’t see Bucky appear. He really never sees Bucky appear anywhere. The whole catlike assassin thing is still a part of him, probably always will be. “They cured polio.” Bucky’s voice is almost broken, full of unspeakable things. It’s too dark to see his face, but the voice is pure Bucky and it hurts, it hurts, it’s not fair. None of this is fair.

“Sort of.” Steve pauses, gauges the change in Bucky’s breathing. “A vaccine, in the ‘50s. Apparently it’s pretty rare now.” Steve moves slowly, sitting up in the bed. He’s extremely conscious of the lack of clothing on his part - just boxers - and pulls a pillow around to hold in front of him. He knows what’s coming.

“I had a sister.” No real intonation, but he’s still all Bucky, and Steve hurts all over.

“Evelyn, yeah. We called her Evie.”

“She died. Polio, then something else.” The voice is turning into Barnes, now.

Steve nods. “When we were kids.” He wants, so much, to reach out a hand to his friend, to embrace him.

“Don’t remember her. It was in the file. Were - did you know her?”

Steve looks away from Barnes, from the shining eyes he knows are there, from the way he knows Bucky’s face goes red when he cries. He wishes this wasn’t happening, or that it had happened with Barnes alone, or something, anything, was different. “She had brown hair, like yours but curly. Hated cats. She was too smart to be our friend, but you worshiped her. After the polio, she was, you know, crippled, but her mind was the same. You’d steal newspapers for her, I’d bring her books from the library.” He is sitting on the edge of his bed now, careful, fragile, not wanting to wreck this chance. “She was amazing.” Two steps and he could have Bucky in his arms, but it would never work and he’d break this fragile moment with his stupid meaty hands.

“And now she’s dead. So are my parents. And the Commandos. And all the people in the apartment building.” Bucky stops himself, twitches his mouth shut, moves his good shoulder in an absent motion of discontent. Steve knows that particular bundle of feelings, knows that body language, and everything in him screams to go to the other man, to pull him into a hug, to cry with him, but Steve’s been here before and knows this game.

“Start naming the dead and you’ll never stop, Buck. Trust me.” He reaches over to turn on the lamp; when the light floods the room, Bucky’s gone. It’s disturbingly common now. Lots of things are.

 

—

 

“Nice one, Barnes.” Barton rarely talks to Bucky unless it’s mission-oriented, and even then he’s curt to the point of rudeness. Not that Barton’s not a little rude to everybody, but it’s noticeable with Bucky. Steve tries to chalk it up to some past issue, something from back when Barton was a sniper for hire and Bucky was the Soldier. Maybe the Soldier tried to take out Clint, or vice versa, or both over the years. Barton is pretty quiet about his life before, and Bucky is—well. Bucky is better, but he’s still steel and snow in most ways, and Steve is starting to realize that he may never be the old smiling Bucky ever again. The glimpses he gets of Bucky make it hard to accept, because he feels like he’s right there, just under the surface, but then he’ll be gone, back into Barnes like he is most days. He should have expected that. War changes everyone, Bucky hasn’t been the same since the HYDRA camp, not really. This is just more real, more strange than your plain old garden-variety shell shock.

Barnes jerks a nod. “Like in Qarshi, hm?”

Barton laughs, loud and sudden. “Oh fuck, I forgot about that. They say the carpet sellers still have WANTED posters of you.”

“Da, oni dolzhny.” Barnes (shades of the Soldier, but not overly, just a hint around the edges) says. Barton laughs again and they’re off, talking in hand gestures and sniper shorthand Steve just barely grasps. It’s not quite Bucky and Natasha jabbering about God knows what in their own little corner of the room, but it’s close. Steve feels the jealousy again - stupid, he knows it’s stupid. Bucky needs friends, needs a life, needs to have these moments with people other than Steve. The gnawing is there, still, though. Greedy.

He strolls out of the room, forcing the casual nature of the stroll. If Tony were there, he’d grin and make a comment, but luckily Steve runs into Dr. Banner instead. “Captain, I was just looking for you.”

“How can I help?”

“I wanted to see if you’d indulge me - see, I have this theory about your alcohol tolerance.” Dr. Banner smiles, looking suddenly just the littlest bit like Tony.

Steve pastes on a smile. “So you want to get me drunk.”

“Something like that.” Dr. Banner steps carefully away, leading Steve toward the lab. Behind him, he hears a laugh ring out—Bucky’s laugh. Bucky’s laugh, and Steve is fifteen again, staggering drunk home with one hand tangled up in Bucky’s coat pocket so they don’t lose each other, trying to remember the words to “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” using every bit of power he has left to keep walking. Bucky’s laughing, then and now, and Steve can barely breathe either time.

“Cap?” Dr. Banner asks, his face flooded with concern.

“Yeah, sure, coming. After you.” Steve shakes his head, walks unsteadily after the doctor, Bucky’s laugh echoing behind him.

 

—

 

“Hey Cap, your boy’s on TV.” Tony’s voice breaks the daydream Steve had been swimming in, the one where he’d never crashed that plane, where he’d gone back to find Bucky, to save him, and they’d lived happily ever after with Peggy. “Check it out.”

“Who authorized that?” Steve is livid, hot flash of anger. “He’s not ready, he—“

“Just watch the thing, Cap.”

In a vicious parody of obedience, Steve looks at the wall, where an impossibly thin screen is mounted. JARVIS had pulled up the segment from the beginning, apparently, because the host is smiling unnaturally in what honestly looks like a rictus of fear. Her rich voice says, “And with us today, on this momentous occasion, is a very special guest, Sergeant James Barnes.” She swivels in her pastel chair, turns to face him.

Bucky looks…almost normal. Hair still shaggy, but it’s pulled back and smoother somehow. It throws his cheekbones into sharp relief, but instead of looking haggard and half-sick like he usually does, he looks model-thin, glamorous even. Steve can’t imagine him allowing someone near his face with a makeup brush, but maybe they had Natasha do it, because he looks healthy, a little wary still, but handsome as he ever was. He’s even dressed nicely, instead of in running pants and Steve’s shirts that hang on his thin frame. Whoever dressed him has done a great job, nodding to the 40s aesthetic without making it a costume, even adding cufflinks to give Bucky something to fiddle with. Steve is impressed, and then his brain processes what the host and Bucky are saying and all rational thought stops for a minute.

“So Sergeant Barnes, we’re all familiar with your story, but what about the life you lived in the 1930s and ‘40s? What differences do you see from now and then, other than the obvious things?” The grimace on her face could feasibly be called a smile, if you don’t know anything about the way people worked.

Bucky gives his own grimace-as-smile in return. “Lots of things. The Internet. No rationing now.” A faint trace of Russian edges his words, and Steve can feel his heart clench. That accent comes back these days, under stress or fear. Just a hint, just enough to notice, but it hurts to hear it. “But other things, too.”

“Any specific that you’ve noticed? That you want to share?” She’s prodding, and Steve wants to glare at her.

“Under the laws of this country, it’s not a crime to be, um,” Steve sees Bucky steady himself, knows he’s flexing the muscles in his good hand, and he wishes like hell he was there with Bucky,that Bucky wasn’t alone and abandoned on the set with these strangers. “Not a crime to be gay. It’s not illegal. Maybe not accepted everywhere, maybe still a problem, but not a crime.” Bucky’s clear eyes stare into the middle distance. “Before, you could go to jail. You could be killed. Now you can still be,” he fiddles with those cufflinks, which Steve suddenly realizes are star-shaped, “be mistreated, but the law isn’t the same. That’s a good thing.”

The host steels herself, takes a heavy breath. Steve knows before she says it, knows what’s coming. “And why does that change matter to you?”

Bucky smiles, but it’s a shark smile, the one he used to sport just before jumping onto a thug with a hard right hook. “Why do you think, lady?” All Brooklyn, no Russian left, and the moment explodes in Steve’s mind.

There’s more to the interview, but Steve can’t breathe, has to leave the room. He doesn’t hear it, doesn’t hear Bucky talk about the underground in their time, about the half dozen gay bars in their neighborhood. He doesn’t hear Bucky talk about how today, on the anniversary of the DADT policy being thrown out, how good it is that men like him can serve their country openly without fear of being kicked out. He hears all of that later, on the recording JARVIS makes for him. Right then, all he can hear is, “Why do you think, lady?” in a thick Brooklyn swagger; all he can see is a cocked eyebrow and a shark smile and a gleaming metal hand.

 

—

 

“He doesn’t talk to me.” Steve is doodling, endless swirls on the edges of the file Natasha brought him. “He, I mean, he does, that’s not fair. He talks to me some, but he talks to you more. Hell, he talks to news people more than he talks to me.” He knows how petulant he sounds, and the self-loathing threatens to roar up above the mental dam he hides behind.

She sits across from him, idly sharpening one of the half dozen knives in front of her. She and Barnes have the same body language when they sharpen weapons, clean weapons, cloak themselves in dozens of redundant weapons: relaxation. They are rarely relaxed otherwise, but give them a thousand ways to kill a man and they’re easy living. “Really, Steve? You’re mad that he talks to other people?” She glances at him, eyes dark. “Jealous.”

“Not jealous, it’s just—“ Steve heaves a sigh. It’s definitely jealousy, he knows that. “I know him best. I know everything about him. He’s my, he was, I mean, he’s my best friend. Why doesn’t he trust me like he trusts you?”

The hint of amusement she’d had earlier is gone, and now the blank expression Steve dreads slides over her face. “Have you ever been brainwashed?”

“No, I—“

“Have you been tortured? I mean tortured, beyond your ability to endure, by another person, by a human being?”

“No.”

“Then my advice to you is to keep your mouth shut and be grateful.” She sits back, picks up the knife again. The mask slides away a fraction, she thaws just a bit. “Jesus, Steve, if you’re like that with him, it’s a wonder he speaks to you at all.” She lets that hang in the air, solid as stone. “You know nothing of his life since before. Me, I know more than most. Clint knows some. You know less than nothing of the man he is now.”

“He’s my best friend.” Steve doesn’t stand, doesn’t drop into fighting stance, doesn’t move at all, because he doesn’t trust himself. Not trusting his body is a familiar feeling, from childhood asthma and everything else to the sudden shock of being whatever he is now. He doesn’t trust his body, doesn’t trust his heart, doesn’t trust anything but Bucky these days.

“No, he was your best friend. Back then. Maybe he will be again someday, I don’t know. Right now, he’s someone else entirely.” She finishes the knife, picks up another. “Give him space. Give him time. Let him be.”

Steve knows she’s right, can’t stand it, can feel his gorge rising. He flees - no other word for it. He runs like a coward, runs and hides, and weeps with shame when no one can see him.

 

—

 

Tony is too generous sometimes. Steve understands - Howard was the same way - and he tries not to take advantage. But his own floor of Stark Tower had long ago proved too much to say no to. He still keeps his apartment; it’s good to have his own space, away from JARVIS and the team. Most of the time, these days, he stays at the Tower. Bucky has moved in, too, creeping into the rooms slowly as he relearns how to be around people in general and Steve in particular. They find themselves settled nicely into the bedroom. Not sharing a bed, nothing like that. But two beds, opposite sides of the room, like when they were younger. Of course, both beds are several times bigger and more comfortable than the beds they’d had then, but it’s still nice. Nice having a safe place, nice hearing Bucky shuffle around the rooms, nice knowing he’s right there almost close enough to touch.

Not the nightmares. Those aren’t nice. During the Commandos days, Steve had gotten used to them - all the men had them, it was normal in its own way - but these are new and different and much, much worse. His own shell shock, which he happily lied about at every S.H.I.E.L.D.-mandated therapy session before he found Bucky, hasn’t faded any, and Bucky’s considerably worse case is always most vivid and terrifying at night, and so sleep is elusive at best for either of them. They end up spending most of each night watching TV. Neither of them really needs eight hours of sleep to operate anyway, thanks to the serum. Steve gets very hooked on a painting show that comes on one of the educational channels (to the point that if Bucky wants to disrupt a mission briefing he just has to mutter “happy trees” to turn Steve into a jiggling mass of suppressed laughter), and Bucky memorizes huge chunks of old sitcoms. Steve isn’t ever sure what makes Bucky fall for a sitcom (this one, not that one, these three but not the fourth, some criteria Steve can’t figure out), but sometimes Bucky will rattle off dialogue to make Steve laugh. That part is very nice. It feels like the old days, except for the TV part. And the no touching.

He wonders now how he never realized Bucky was, well. Queer is what he would have called it then, but he’s not sure what words Bucky’d want him to use. Or if Bucky would even care. The point is, he should have realized it back then, when they were kids, instead of from the interview. It’s so obvious now, he thinks. When Bucky, hungry for touch, would curl up like a cat with his head by Steve’s stomach, listening to Steve read the paper aloud. When Bucky, drunk and laughing, had disappeared from the bar that Christmas at the same time the tall Black man had. When Bucky, sorrowful after Evie’s service, asked Steve to share the bed (implying he was freezing, which he probably was) and Steve woke up wrapped up with him, both of them hard as rocks. Steve had carefully slid away, slipped off to the toilet, but the memory brings a sudden flaring heat to his cheeks. Bucky had dated, loved flirting, been with dozens of women, but it was so clear in memory now, looking back. Steve remembers the tall Black man, and then remembers a few other times the same thing happened. He’d never put two and two together, because, as he hears himself suddenly say aloud, “I’m an idiot.” He really, really is.

That night he dreams about Bucky and a soldier they’d both known, Reese, who’d been killed in Belgium. Before that, he’d been a dead ringer, if Steve was being honest, for Robert Taylor, and he can’t believe he never noticed how Bucky’s eyes had strayed over to the young man more often than could strictly be explained. There’d never been anything, Steve knew. No matter what, Bucky was scrupulous about power balance, all the time, would never have slept with a subordinate. Bucky had gotten into more than one brawl with a soldier who didn’t see things the same way and took advantage. He knows this like he knows the ways Bucky shifts into Barnes into the Soldier, like he knows how to make coffee from nothing, like he knows his mother’s voice. Steve’s subconscious apparently doesn’t believe him, though. His dreams are full of Bucky and Reese and things he knows Bucky’s done with other men, with women, things he heard Bucky doing through the thin walls of his youth. Things Steve suddenly and with no hesitation wants for himself. He wakes up, hard as steel, and looks across the room to where his best friend dozes lightly. He opens his mouth to say something, to interrupt the rare and fragile sleep of his—what, his friend? What else to say? How to even start? Steve gapes for a moment. Stops. Slips away to the bathroom just like old times. He’ll get used to it, he tells himself. Just takes some time. Everything does.

 

—

 

“When did you know it was me?”

“What, my Secret Santa? Probably when they gave me a pair of socks.” They’d been nice socks, handmade, thick wool. “You’re the only one who’d do that.”

“No, peabrain.” All Bucky there, in the laugh and the gently tossed pillow. “When did you know the Winter Soldier was me?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Buck, I’d know you from across a crowded room, behind a plant, drunk off my ass, with one eye closed.” Bucky snorts, and Steve can’t stop his smile from growing. “I knew it was you on the rooftop, when you caught my shield and looked at me. I just…didn’t believe it.”

“Thought you were the only super soldier who got frozen and thawed out?” It’s an attempt at humor, but Bucky’s grin stretches into something more like a grimace. Steve can’t imagine what this conversation is costing him. Can’t fathom the strength of will keeping him Bucky instead of shutting completely off into the Soldier and running away.

“Thought you were dead. Thought you were dead a long time ago, and I was all by myself.” Steve reaches out a hand to him without thinking. He’s done it a dozen times, more, and he knows what happens next, and he hates himself for trying again. The door swings shut behind Bucky, and Steve is left holding one hand out to no one, nothing, nyet. He’s learned that word, at least.

 

—

 

“What was he good at?”

To say that it’s been a bad day would be a drastic understatement. The man who’d woken up had been Soldier, through and through, and it had taken hours to get him calm, to slow his breathing, to convince him that it was 2014, that he was in Stark Tower, that he was safe, that no one and nothing was going to wipe him or hurt him. It had taken a few more hours to help him remember Steve. English. His own name. It was the first bad day in a while, and it was as if all the bad days that hadn’t happened had just been waiting for this day to come, all the karmic debt they’d built up over days of Bucky being almost a regular person again coming crashing down at once. Bad day.

It hasn’t really improved much from there. Now they sit, Steve worn and wrung out, one huge hand curling around a now-cold mug of herbal tea, Barnes staring straight ahead with the empty gaze Steve knows all too well from his own mirror. The question hangs in the air between them. “Who? Bucky? You?”

A sharp nod.

“Everything.” Steve breathes, breathes, breathes. “You were real good at languages. Picked ‘em up fast. French, Spanish, German, real good. A little Japanese, I don’t even know what all.”

“No Spanish anymore. Very little Japanese.” Barnes shrugs one shoulder. “Still the others. Polish and Russian, now, also. Little Urdu.” Soldier creeping in around the sentence structure, but he’s still Barnes, and Steve wants to sob.

“Probably more, if you tried.” Steve sips the cold tea, grimaces. He keeps talking, carefully not watching Barnes get up, start the kettle. “Good in a fight, obviously. A good dancer. Snappy dresser.” The irony of saying that to the scraggly-haired man before him, currently sporting three days’ worth of beard and a pair of sweatpants worn through at the knees and a workout shirt Steve knows is at least three sizes too big, is obvious. “Good with people.” Steve glances toward the counter that Barnes is leaned up against. Barnes is watching the kettle, and Steve darts his gaze away before that changes. “Real good at fixing things, you know, like the radio. One time, your ma, her sewing machine - we’d gotten it for her a few years before that, scraped up the money.” Steve pauses, thinking. “Actually, you know what, I think you stole it and told me we scraped up the money.” Barnes lets out chuckle so soft that Steve thinks he must have imagined it. “Anyway, it broke, something in it broke, and you spent a week fiddling with it. Two pieces of wire and some screws you found somewhere.” He smiles, remembering. “You had grease all over your face, and you strutted into the kitchen and told me you’d fixed it. I don’t know what you did, but it worked like a charm, better than before.”

“Never broke again.” That’s all Bucky, and the kettle’s shrieking. “Whaddya want?”

Steve stops himself from saying “everything” again, but it’s a near miss. Instead he chokes out, “Surprise me.”

The silence between them is almost warm as Bucky pours the boiling water into Steve’s mug. He pulls another from the shelf for himself, flips through the box of teabags, and drops one in each mug. He walks carefully back to the table and slides Steve’s toward him. Steve isn’t sure what to do. He doesn’t want to ruin this somehow, but he doesn’t want it to ever end, the moment of Bucky remembering him, remembering himself, remembering them. The moments happen more often now, but never enough, and Steve feels shame flood through him at his own selfishness, at his venality, at his failures. He keeps talking, throat feeling thick with guilt.

“You played the piano. You liked movies, music, anything like that. Weren’t too excited about art, but you’d go with me to the museums on free days.”

“Didn’t read.” It’s a statement, not a question, and this is Barnes more than Bucky now, and Steve aches, every inch of him aches.

“No, something with the letters. You said they made your head hurt. These days, they’d call it a learning disorder or something, give you special classes for it.”

“Instead?” He genuinely doesn’t seem to remember, and the pain in Steve’s heart blooms bigger and colder.

“I’d do it for you. Read my book or the newspaper out loud, or if it was a contract or paperwork or something, I’d just take care of it. Signed your name for you, wrote letters, whatever you needed. Least I could do.”

Barnes makes a noncommittal noise. “Orders to be presented orally, mission reports the same.” The syntax is strange for Barnes, and Steve realizes he’s probably repeating a statement made by someone else.

“Oh.”

“It’s fine.” Barnes now, moving into Bucky. “Wondered. The piano, huh?”

“There’s one two floors up, in the library,” Steve says too quickly. “If, I mean, if you ever wanna—“

But Bucky is gone, slipped out of the room. His mug is still steaming.

 

—

 

Darcy swallows a mouthful of curry and says, “The funny thing is — not funny ha-ha, funny ‘leave me here to die in a puddle of feelings’ — is that I can totally, totally see why you love him.”

Steve carefully chooses to interpret ‘love’ as ‘appreciate,’ because he isn’t in the mood for this. It’s been a rough week, lots of backwards movement with Barnes, plus bureaucratic nightmares by the gallon over at Stark’s. He’s so damn tired. “He’s, or he was, or he will be, something, all right.”

“No, I mean it!” She opens her eyes even wider, as if that makes her more easily understood. “I mean, yeah, at first he’s all dark and brooding and serial killer-y, but then I was watching him sparring, you know, EXTREMIS training with Pepper and he’s like Captain Smooth or something. Or he’ll, you know, wash the dishes or whatever, and act like it’s not a thing, when it totally is a thing. And it’s not like he’s not serial killer-y, I mean, he’s still brainwashed Soviet assassin guy, but he’s also, you know, gorgeous and really sweet in a weird way, I guess? So yeah, I totally get the love.” Darcy is waving her plastic spoon in the air, emphasizing her point, when a glob of sauce flies off of it and into Steve’s brand-new white running shirt. “Ugh, shit, sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” he says, dipping his napkin in water and dabbing at the bright yellow splotch. “Needed to wash this anyway.” Clears his throat. “Darcy, I’m awfully tired, I think I’ll head back to the Tower and get some rest. Thanks for lunch,” stands, almost makes it out of the room.

“I’ll walk with you,” she chirps, and it’s always hard to tell if Darcy is being serious or sarcastic. But the smile on her face makes Steve think she’s doing it on purpose, to bother him, so she can keep yammering on, saying how handsome Bucky is. Like Steve isn’t completely aware of how handsome Bucky is and has always been. She keeps talking as they start to walk the eight blocks back to the Tower, telling Steve all about how Bucky had “made bread the other day, just made it! Not from a box or anything, just mixed and stirred and kneaded — and that was super hot, the kneading, you know, he got all floury, sorry, that’s your man I’m perving all over, isn’t it?”

That last is what gets him. Steve stops, puts one hand on Darcy’s elbow so she’ll notice. Turns her toward him. “Look, Darcy, I understand what you’re saying, but Bucky and I are just,” he pauses. “Bucky was my best friend and we’re learning how to be best friends again. There’s nothing romantic there. Do you understand?” He can taste ashes in his mouth, and he hates himself so viciously it almost rocks him back onto his heels.

Darcy’s unreasonably huge eyes widen even more. “But, you guys are, like, so obviously into each other. I mean, the only way you could be more in love is if your eyes were literally little sparkling hearts.”

“Whatever you think you see isn’t my concern.” Steve’s heart is freezing cold, his spine is ice. He is ashamed of himself. He is afraid. He is not the man he should be, not in this moment. “What I’m telling you is that Bucky and I are just friends, that’s it. And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop spreading gossip like that.” Darcy presses her lips together into a thin line and breaks eye contact. She stomps away, her heavy boots sounding angry, and Steve considers lying down on the filthy sidewalk to cry. He doesn’t, of course, but it is deeply tempting.

The rest of the walk is spiky but quiet. Steve can’t even look at Darcy. When she peels off to go meet Jane and Thor in the lobby, Steve doesn’t acknowledge any of them. Instead he stalks up to the elevator, slams the button too hard, and chews himself out in his head the entire trip up to his floor. He doesn’t punch the walls because then he’d have to explain himself. He doesn’t get drunk because his stupid fucking body won’t let him. He doesn’t call Sam because he doesn’t want to be told he’s an idiot, he’s good enough at that on his own. He doesn’t seek out Bucky because there is literally nothing in the world that could be worse than to do that. The stain doesn’t come out. Steve throws the shirt into the garbage chute, then feels guilty, then has a full-fledged panic attack for the first time in more than a month. It’s not a good day.

 

—

 

“The Smithsonian’s not wrong, Cap, you’re wrong, and Pep, honey, I’m not going.” Tony’s fiddling with one or another of the robots, doing something very complicated while also smoking, eating a donut, wiggling along with a rock song, and arguing with both Pepper (something about a charity gala) and Steve (about the Smithsonian). “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got about a million things I need to do, and Cap, seriously, you’re wrong. Trust me. Ask him if you don’t believe me or the dozens of highly trained resear—shit, Pepper, that is really, yes, okay, fine, fine, no, it’s fine, it’ll be fine.” He waves a donut at Steve, telling him to go away. Steve does.

Later, Steve does ask Bucky about it — well, Barnes. He’s been Barnes for three days straight now without a single slip into the Soldier. It’s a new record, and Steve knows in his bones he shouldn’t bring this up now, but he can’t stop himself. Turns out he, not the Smithsonian, was wrong. Tony was right, but Steve elides that in favor of freaking the hell out.

“No,” Barnes says, sharpening an already-razor-sharp knife, “Didn’t enlist. Drafted.”

Steve can feel his mouth hanging open. “You told me you enlisted. You said that. A dozen times. You told everyone in the building that you enlisted! You said it was a, a good paycheck and a free trip to England. You said that to me. You told your sister—”

“Lied.” Barnes puts down the knife, picks up another. Keeps sharpening. “Applied for, what’s the word? Objector status. Got rejected. Wasn’t in school, they didn’t care about a sick friend, so.”

Steve sits heavily on the floor. “You tried to dodge the draft?”

“Not dodge, no,” Barnes makes eye contact for a second, looks away. “Tried to stay. With you. Didn’t work. Didn’t want you to know.”

“Why?”

A wordless shrug. This conversation is over, Steve knows, but he can’t stop himself.

“Goddammit, Buck. You lied to me.”

Barnes’s eyes go dead and cold in the worst way, and Steve hates himself always but the new extra wave of self-loathing is especially visceral now. “You lie to me. Every day.” Barnes stalks out of the room, leaving a small pile of extremely sharp knives glittering on the table. Leaving Steve, head in hands, to sort out his feelings into neat piles of anger and hatred and fear and pity and shame. It’s not like this every day, Steve knows, even when it feels like it is, even when it feels like any good day is a blip, an aberration in a shitty life of shittiness. Sam would say that part of learning to be a person again is to accept that some days will feel endless and representative of your whole life, but they’re not really. Each day is its own day, and there’s no basis to decide that one bad day means your whole life is shit. Steve’s heard that lecture enough times. Doesn’t help right now.

 

—

 

Things Bucky has become obsessed with since the team started having weekly Pop Culture 101 “classes,” which are really team dinners and movie watching:

**\- Lord of the Rings**

Technically, this isn’t really a new obsession. He’s loved The Hobbit since before the war. Steve read it to him half a dozen times, so that isn’t new (Bucky’s favorite part is when Bilbo talks to Smaug). But finding out that there were three more books, and that they’d all been made into movies, Bucky lights up. Dr. Banner talks him out of watching the newer Hobbit movies, assuring him that they’re terrible. So instead they start with an animated version. Steve is amazed that Bucky remembers the story so well. Then they watch the three movies based on the three books they haven’t read yet, and Steve ends up sobbing quietly at least a half dozen times. He’d feel ashamed, but everyone else is pretty emotional, too. Bucky loses it, just for a second, when Pippin sings while Faramir leads a doomed charge. His entire face seems to crumple, and Steve isn’t thinking when he puts a hand on the good shoulder, but it seems okay. Bucky breathes, a few shallow shaky breaths, flexes the metal hand a few times. The scene ends, and Bucky shakes Steve’s hand off, stands, asks Sam to pause it while he gets the kettle going.

**\- Harry Potter**

Steve finds these audiobooks, is the thing. He is wasting some time in the bookshop down the street, the one run by the two married old ladies, and the connection suddenly flares up in his mind and he nearly sobs. “What, um, sorry, which of these would you recommend? For a friend of mine. He likes The Hobbit, and, uh,” and then all the memories crowd into his head, Bucky laughing uproariously at Huck Finn, gasping at “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Bucky, eyes shining, smiling, alive. “Classics, I guess.” The ladies start chattering, loading up a bag with things to try, telling him to bring them back if they’re not right. Before he leaves, one leans in to point to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, saying, “This one. Start with this one.” Apparently it works, because Bucky’s ears are covered with headphones for weeks, and he and Darcy have long, involved conversations about things like Muggles. They also make a chart of all the Avengers and some nonsense words in various colors. Steve notes that his own name has two of the words underneath it, one in red and the other in yellow. Most of the other Avengers have just one word under their names, so he’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Bucky tells him not to worry about it, a lazy grin on his face, and Steve is so happy to see the grin from his memories that he leaves it alone after that.

**\- Reality TV**

This isn’t really Bucky’s obsession so much as it is everyone’s. It’s all Dr. Banner’s fault. He says that the mindless plotlines and cliche characters are good for helping him keep an even keel, but then he turns on Top Chef and everyone gets hooked. Arguments explode and everyone’s angry but also having fun, and then Clint insists they watch the first season of Amazing Race, which he, Bucky, and Natasha immediately start strategizing about, and it all goes downhill from there. Steve knows for a fact that Bucky has seen every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race (which, yes, it’s great, but that’s not the point), and that he’s two-thirds of the way through some gut-wrenching thing about abused animals. He knows about the animals one because he caught Sam and Bucky arguing loudly about whether or not Tony would let them send the shelter on the show a few million dollars (Sam thinks he wouldn’t notice, Bucky thinks it’s not enough). He makes the mistake of watching one episode and ends up crying at the local animal shelter, petting every dog in the place until he runs out of tears. They don’t bring home any dogs, because the Tower isn’t really pet-friendly, but it becomes increasingly commonplace for one or more Avengers to show up on their days off to walk and pet and feed the shelter’s entire poplulation. Bucky has a weekly date with the pit bull rescue group, Sam takes the retired greyhounds out for long jogs, and Steve routinely disappears for hours, lost in talking to the oldest, ugliest mutts he can find. Anyway, the point is, whatever JARVIS uses to record shows for Bucky (specifically, as opposed to the other Avengers) is becoming 75% reality shows, 10% cooking shows, and 5% each black-and-white classics, Westerns, and Mets games. They watch a lot of TV these days.

 

—

 

“Did you see this?” Bucky waves an audiobook in Steve’s face. It’s a bright yellow cover, a few actors in bad WWII uniforms. “They wrote a book - a few books, I guess - about Jones. The team he was on. After.” If Steve didn’t look close, didn’t notice the arm, he’d forget they weren’t who they’d always been. Bucky could be bursting into the room to tell him about a sale on fish, or about this crazy Stark Expo, or about Pearl Harbor. He’d been the bearer of news back then, the same tone of voice, the same shock that Steve didn’t already know about it.

“Really? I haven’t gotten there yet. Reading what happened to the team in detail, I mean. I know the basic outlines, but I don’t know. Feels funny to call it history, to dig into their lives.” Steve takes the case in his hand, turns it over to read the back. “You remember Jones?”

Bucky shrugs his good shoulder. “Some. Morita. Dugan and the French one, a little. Not much of Falsworth.”

“You and Falsworth fought like cats and dogs.” Steve says, a smile creeping over his face. “Morita was probably your favorite, then Jones. You loved Dugan, though - like he was your brother.”

“In the place,” Bucky says, “with Zola.” Heavy dose of Barnes now, because they’re talking about the past and something difficult, and Barnes tends to flare up in those conversations.

Steve nods. “Dugan told me you stepped in front of them when Zola came. You picked fights with the guards so they’d punish you most. You,“ Steve chokes. “You were their hero, then and all during the war. When you fell, they.” Stops. What words could do it justice? He remembers the red-rimmed eyes, the long sleepless night in the bar, the rage simmering just below the surface. He’d personally made sure they all went to bed, no wandering out where they could snap and do who knows what from grief and sorrow and pain. He knew and knows the feeling well, it still lives under his skin, and it was those barely controlled men who kept him grounded just like he kept them trapped on base. They made it through that night, and he went on into the future on a dying plane and never saw them again. He wonders, sometimes, what they did the next night.

Bucky clears his throat, shatters Steve’s reverie. Takes the audiobook back. Sets it on the couch. Runs his good hand through his scraggly hair. “The Russians rescued art, too. Kept it, though.”

“Really?” Bucky rarely talks about the Russians. He never says “we” and he never says “they,” only ever “the Russians.” Steve’s sure that means something, but he can’t for the life of him figure out what.

Bucky nods, his gaze far away. “Lost the Amber Room. Other things. Saved some. Saw them, one time. Mission.”

“Undercover work? Or the other?”

A shrug of the good arm again. “Both. Neither.” He looks at the wall, where Tony’s birthday gift (a nice print of one of Steve’s sketches from art school, or maybe the original, who knows) hangs in a plain wooden frame. “Never cared about art. You did.” At Steve’s nod, he continues. “Thought you’d want to know. About Jones, and the art.”

“Thank you.” Steve is not near tears, he’s not, not at all. “Thank you, Bucky.”

Barnes’s mouth opens, shuts a few times. “An exhibition. At the Smithsonian. Next month. Because they made a movie. A drama, not a documentary, I mean. We could,” he flexes the metal hand once. “Stark said he could get us in after close. Or you could, really. To see it. Jones is in it, and the art.” Barnes closes his eyes, recites, “The Ghent Altarpiece, the Madonna of Bruges, The Astronomer,” he opens them. “Some others. I don’t know. Would you like to?”

Steve can’t speak. He nods once, twice, watches a slow smile spread across Barnes’s face. Sometimes, when Bucky is Barnes, he’s got that same streak of thoughtfulness under the Brooklyn swagger. The smile on Barnes’s face isn’t one Bucky used often, but it’s not fake or forces. Maybe it’s his new smile, if Barnes is who he ever settled into being. Steve thinks he could handle that. He’d rather have Bucky, his Bucky, but Barnes is Bucky, too, and this is why he doesn’t talk about this with other people. It gets confusing. It takes some getting used to. Everything does.

 

\--

 

Steve isn’t religious, really. Not the way you’d think. God, Jesus, all that, he didn’t have a problem with it or anything. A guy who told people to treat each other well was on the right track as far as Steve could tell; no need to bring God into it. Some guys got more religious in the war. Most went the other way. Steve had grown up a shaky half-Catholic at best, but Bucky’s Jewish, and when your best friend’s family are the only Jewish people on the block, well. You either get real religious real fast or you go the other way. Steve believes in God, he guesses, in a vague sort of this-doesn’t-affect-my-daily-life way. Thor and Asgard and all that, he knows right away they weren’t gods - not immortal, not infallible, too much personality. Yeah, the bearded man in the sky with lightning bolts part of it seems about right, but they’re too petty and human to be any kind of god to him.

But if there is a God, and Steve thinks that there might as well be, he doubts He’d care too much about anything going on here on Earth. God hadn’t seemed to care too much about the war, about those matchstick people in the camps, about Steve’s ma, about Bucky’s sister, about anybody on their block. God doesn’t seem to be invested in helping the poor or hungry or sick here in the future either, or the present, whatever. It’s people like Stark, despite all his ego and bluster, and Banner, with his calm smile and careful steps, who are changing the world for the better. And besides, what kind of God gives a rat’s ass about something like sex? For all the people with signs and banners seemed to believe about God, Steve hasn’t seen anything that made God seem that invested in who was sleeping with who. Live and work and fight alongside enough people in enough places, you see pretty much any sexuality or sex act ever invented, and two men in love had never been the worst thing he’d seen.

That’s all to say, when he gets arrested, it isn’t because of God. It is absolutely because of those horrible people claiming that God hates - well. Steve won’t use the word. Anyway, they are wrong, and they are cruel and snide and Steve hates them, hates them, and their protests are blocking the way of a young veteran’s memorial service, and one thing leads to another. Steve punches the wall, not the man sneering in his face, and while that is apparently good enough for the police, it isn’t anywhere near good enough for Steve. The wall crumbles and, in that moment, Steve wants nothing more than to see the man’s face crumble and shatter, to watch him fall. It has been a long time since he’s wanted to kill someone this much.

The moment passes. He calms down, stews in the holding room for a while. Lets Sam sign him out, pays a fine. But when Stark’s lawyer team suggests he apologize, he throws what Bucky would’ve called a shit fit had he been there. “Absolutely not. Not happening.”

“No one listens to these people, Captain Rogers, but the property damage—“

Steve doesn’t hear the rest of the sentence, because he is gone. He sits on the floor in front of his bed in the Tower, rests his head against the mattress, takes deep breaths and tries to let go of his anger. He’s always been angry about bullies, about cruelty, about injustice, and he’d hoped for a brief second when he woke up that the future would be different. In ways it is. Gay people can get married most places now, all races can vote, women have a few more rights. All that’s fantastic, but most of the time it feels worse than it had been back then.

He doesn’t hear Bucky come in, because Bucky is silent when he doesn’t consciously make noise. He has to do that for Ms. Potts, for example, who nearly burned his good arm off when he accidentally scared her in the hallway once. Steve doesn’t notice him until he slides down on the floor, rests his head next to Steve’s on the mattress. “What are we looking at, pal?” Stares up at the ceiling like Steve’s seen something important.

“Did you ever,” a pause. Bucky’s metal arm is cold against him. “Back then, were you, I guess they’d call it ‘out’ these days? Did everyone know? Do you remember?” Steve hears his voice asking these questions as if it’s from far away.

“Some.” Bucky’s all Bucky, voice creaky and soft. “Your ma, I think. My sister. Maybe a couple of the dames I ran around with. The fellas.”

“Yeah, they’d probably know,” Steve tries to joke. “Anybody give you shit? I don’t remember ever getting in a brawl over your, uh. Dating life. Except Marjorie O’Bannon’s brother, but that isn’t really the same thing.”

“Ha, Marjorie O’Bannon, forgot about her.” Bucky chuckles. “Always did like a blond.” Steve can feel his ears getting red. Bucky heaves a sigh. “Yeah, I don’t know. But then,” Steve can hear him smile, “I don’t know a lot these days. Nah, it wasn’t an open secret. Dated enough girls that nobody seemed to notice. The Commandos knew, though.”

“You were with a guy in the war?” Steve’s head lifts up off the mattress like a rocket. “Who? When? How?” He can see the smile stretching over Bucky’s face, that ragged hair spread over the mattress, and suddenly all he can see is that same look with a sweaty forehead, with heavy breathing, clenched hands, and he has to shake his head hard to get the picture out of his head. Now’s not the time. Never’s the time, probably.

“Nah, nobody in particular. Not like you with your red dress dame.” Bucky scratches his head with his good arm, lifts his head, meets Steve’s eyes. “They weren’t blind, though. Or stupid.”

“So I’m blind. Or stupid.”

“Both.” Bucky grins, all white teeth and angles, and Steve cannot stop himself anymore. Lunges forward. Presses his lips to that smile. For a moment, nothing happens. Then, everything happens.

After, Steve is terrified. Terrified and angry and bitter and sorry and not sorry at all even the tiniest bit and he’s so…Darcy would say, “everything is everything,” which is something she says when she feels overwhelmed. Usually she’s saying it about a TV show, but it’s applicable here. Bucky is awake, seems relaxed, seems fine, even. Listening to an audiobook on Steve’s headphones, smoking. The smoking isn’t — Steve doesn’t like it, but he remembers when Bucky picked it up, after that quack doc had told them that cigarettes would help Steve’s asthma. He hadn’t quite bought it then and had felt vindicated when he mentioned it to Ms. Potts and got a shocked reaction. But Bucky’d gotten hooked, loved smoking, and Steve was just relieved to see that he’d picked it back up again. Before, when they’d just barely gotten him back, the sight of Bucky not smoking was nearly as jarring as the sight of Bucky existing, alive, here.

“They don’t do anything for me.” Bucky has pulled off the headphones, is gesturing with the cigarette in his good hand. Steve guesses he’d been staring at it, lost in his own thoughts. “I mean, not like they used to. I just like the way it feels. Familiar.” If Bucky wasn’t stark naked, if they hadn’t just— nope, Steve isn’t touching that memory yet, it’ll bubble up when it bubbles up and he’ll deal with it then. If he closed his eyes, it’d be like old times.

“Drinking’s like that for me,” he says, focusing carefully on Bucky’s face and good hand and not at all on the grenade-like stomach or anything south of there. “Like the feel of it, but it might as well be water. Haven’t tried a cigarette.”

“Did you hear they’re no good for asthma?” Bucky asks, his face open. “That goddamn doc, all of ‘em, telling you to, and it was making it worse. And me bullying you into keeping it up, trying to, I mean. Can you believe it?”

“What do we do now?” The words burst out of Steve’s mouth before he can stop them. “Hell, I’m sorry,” he says, burying his head in a pillow to avoid looking at the other man. “I’m sorry, I’ve never. Not with.” He can’t make sentences. His hands are going to start shaking any second, this is going to be a panic attack, he can feel it. “I don’t know what to do, Buck.”

Bucky’s eyes are steady, his face not quite blank. “All right. That’s all right. You don’t have to.”

“I mean,” and Steve feels twelve again, feels twenty, sees every girl he’s ever fallen for smirking at him in the still clear face of his best friend. “I’m not, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I’m, you know, gay, I mean, I don’t think I’m gay, I don’t know, Bucky, help me, I—“

“Breathe, Steve, come on. Take a breath.” All Bucky, sudden and sure, one hand (the good hand) on Steve’s clenching back, and sure the muscle wasn’t there back then but all Steve can feel is the shiver in the air in their old walkup in Brooklyn, Bucky pressing one hand (one of two, then) into his skinny back, urging him to breathe. Things are always circling back to the past, back to the thin walls and the way Bucky took care of him, of them both, did whatever was needed, whenever needed. Bucky, safe and sure and there, and the hilarity that it is him now holding Steve together in the future where he is a formerly brainwashed Russian assassin cyborg is…something.

Steve’s hands shake, his vision swims, but Bucky’s voice is a tether and slowly, slowly Steve’s breath catches back up with him. Slowly, slowly, his body relaxes, muscles ease back into something like normal, head comes up from between his knees. “Buck,” he says, not looking up just yet, “Buck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m fine, honest.” Makes eye contact. “I’m okay. Just, can you, you know, talk about something? Whatever you want. Just until I’m settled again?” It’s an old request, a play-the-hits throwback to when Bucky’s voice was the only anchor keeping Steve in his coughing, wheezing, shaking body. Steve panics, just for a second, an extra panic coating on the panic sandwich, that Bucky won’t remember that, will slip into Barnes or worse, will forget what and who and why in this, the most inopportune moment.

Instead, Bucky sits back just a bit, good hand resting idly on Steve’s back, and talks.

“Jesus, Steve, take a breath, okay? Talked to Natasha the other day, and she said - well, it might not translate, but in English it’d be something like, ‘Knives aren’t meant for air’. But we were talking about how we feel, you know, being what we used to be and now being here, and that we flip our knives, you’ve seen me do it,” Bucky glances at Steve, catches his eye, looks back into the middle distance. “We both do it, and it’s for a reason. I mean, we stay in shape for safety, to keep safe,” he’s flickering in and out, into Barnes, even into the Soldier for half a second, losing a handle on grammar and accent, but his hand stays soft, stays open, and Steve is not quite calm but not in terror either. “Safe, but, how to explain. Cutting into air, into nothing, is no good. Like cutting a ghost. Natasha worries that we both enjoy, too much, the cutting into a thing, into someone, because at least we are real then. We are not ghosts. Does that make sense?” He’s all Bucky again, and Steve’s breath is back, regular. “Sorry, that was probably darker than you were wanting. I’m not the best at chipper these days, I guess.” A lazy grin. “If you’re queer, you’re queer, nothin’ to fix about it. If you’re not, you’re not, nothin’ wrong with it. Like Natasha says, you know, don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“Natasha says that?” Steve is very nearly back to normal, just a strange fluttering echo in his chest that isn’t physical anymore. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s not his heart or lungs or any nerve or muscle he knows of.

“Well, I mean, she says it in Russian, so it doesn’t sound as nice,” another grin, all shark’s teeth like in the old days. “But yeah. What’s the point of living in the future if we still have to pretend to be something we’re not, you know?”

“I love you.” It slips out and Steve wants both to never have said it and to have said it a hundred years ago when they were small, have said it every day since, have said it every second of every day of their lives. “Sorry, I—“

Bucky leans forward, presses his lips to Steve’s. It’s soft and fond and easy, like they’ve done this a million times and will do it a million more, and that’s the best thing he could have done. Steve relaxes into it, brings one hand up to Bucky’s scratchy cheek, and he could die again here and be, if not okay with it, at least much less unhappy than the last time he died.

 

—

 

“I will never be redeemed,” Barnes says, just a hint of Russian around the edges. His voice spills out into the room, Sam’s brood of veterans listening hungrily. “I will never atone for the things I have done. To try would be to waste my time. What I can do, now, with the skills I have earned, is to do the best I can.” He looks down at his hands, and Steve knows what he is seeing. “I will always be many men in one. I will be James Barnes, and a kid named Bucky, and the Winter Soldier, too, and the man I am today. I will never be whole.” A slow smile spreads across his face. “There is an American proverb, that living well is the best revenge. I like it. In Russian, I would say, ‘Chtoby byt' zhivym khorosho . Prozhit' zhizn' luchshe’. That is, I think, ‘to live is good, but to live life is better.’ Both are true.”

The room nods as one.

“You are alive. Some of your friends, your loved ones, are not. That is all that matters. You are living, not dead.” Barnes’s smile turns sharp and cold. “I have been both, so trust me. I will add a third proverb to our list: Living is better, but living well is best. Thank you.” He sits to sustained applause. Turns to Steve. “I ain’t much for public speaking,” he says, all Bucky now, the request for praise or touch or approval cloaked in self-deprecation.

Steve takes his good hand, laces their fingers together. “You did fine. Proud of you.” He feels the slightest tightening in Bucky’s hand, almost an affectionate squeeze. Sam gets up, talks through things, other people do the same. They sit, good hand in good hand, and half-listen. Steve’s head is full of memory, of the things they’d done together that week, that month, that year, forty years ago, of the first time he’d met the square-jawed kid who grew up to be his best friend. Bucky, who ever knows what he’s thinking? They’re here, together, mostly safe and generally sound, but Bucky’s breathing hitches and stutters. He’s afraid, terribly afraid, and Steve leans into his ear, mutters, “Wanna get out of here?”

He honestly didn’t mean it that way, but Bucky’s stiff expression melts into a leer, and suddenly that’s exactly how Steve meant it. They’re upstairs before Sam even notices, wringing each other out, collapsing, exhausted. When the meeting ends, they file out with everyone else, and only Sam seems to notice. “Y’all look good,” he says, shaking their hands gingerly. “Washed up after, right?”

Bucky’s laugh rings out and Steve’s ears burn and maybe everything will be all right after all.

 

—

 

“On your six, Sam!”

“You know, Steve,” Barnes’s voice is silky and calm in the way Steve remembers in stark relief, “you’re not being very helpful. Poor Sam’s out there flying, I’m up here making impossible shots, and what are you doing? Just trying to get that stupid shield unstuck.”

“Shut up, Bucky!”

“No, I don’t think I will, because I’m gonna point out one more time that the shield is ridiculous. Much like you.”

“Hey, when y’all stop flirting, somebody get me out of this!” Sam’s voice bursts over the channel.

“On my way! Buck, be useful, wouldya?”

The click of Barnes readying the rifle. “I’m always useful, Steve."

In the suit, Stark zooms by. “Can we focus on the HYDRA dudes tearing up the sidewalk here? For like a minute?”

Steve bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning; he can barely breathe, he’s so hopeful. It’s been almost two years since Bucky - since they found the Soldier scraggly and sleeping rough under a bridge, since Steve had begged him to trust them, since Sam had carefully divested him of half a dozen knives. It’s been six months since the kiss and the whirlwind of what happened after. Now they’re here, Bucky’s old voice slipping over the comms, his ruthless aim pointed at HYDRA agents instead of the other way around. They’re going to go home after this and eat dinner with their friends, then go upstairs together without shame or secrets. It takes some getting used to. Everything does.

**Author's Note:**

> title from “In Our Bedroom After the War” - Stars  
> 
>
>>   
> Lift your head and look out the window  
> Stay that way for the rest of the day and watch the time go  
> Listen! The birds sing! Listen! The bells ring!  
> All the living are dead, and the dead are all living  
> The war is over and we are beginning...  
> 
> 
> Chto sdelano, to sdelano. - What’s done is done.  
> Der'mo - shit  
> Da, oni dolzhny. - Yes, they should. 
> 
> Chtoby byt' zhivym khorosho . Prozhit' zhizn' luchshe. - To be alive is good. To live life is better.


End file.
